Zach Keali’i Murphy

Abigail awakens from a sleep as the empty glass vase on her window-side desk shatters onto the wooden floor from a swift autumn gust. She wraps her blanket tighter around her body, rolls over to the other side of the bed, stares at the broken pieces, and sighs. 

Ever since her mother didn’t wake up that one morning, every awakening for her has been a rude one. She digs beneath the bed covers and grabs her phone. She’s been waiting to hear something about the job she applied for a couple weeks ago at the eyewear place. But the only notifications on her phone are spam emails threatening to take away her non-existent car and text messages from her friend, Shelby, containing links to random YouTube videos. Bless her soul, she thinks to herself. But I’m never going to watch these. 

She flops her phone back onto the bed and contemplates whether she should go back to sleep or not. She’d prefer to drown in the waves of her sheets. Depression feels like driving past a lost fawn in a thunderstorm. Anxiety isn’t always about being afraid of what will happen in the future—it’s about being afraid of what won’t happen in the future.

It takes every fiber of her being to get out of bed, but she decides to face the day. She picks up the broken glass from the vase and dumps it into the trash can. She looks out the window and sees a group of children waiting at the bus stop with their parents as falling leaves swirl around their heads. She thinks about her first day of school when she was that age and how she was so excited to put on the turtle backpack that her mother got for her. When Abigail entered her mid-twenties, she swore off sentimentality; but after you lose something so dear, the mind wants to hold onto everything that once was good.

She slides her phone into the pocket of her periwinkle pajamas, steps across her barely-a-studio apartment, uses the bathroom, splashes some cold water onto her face, leaves her apartment, and wanders outside. The wind blows her dark hair against her face as she trots barefoot down the sidewalk over thick layers of fallen leaves. Some of the leaves are sharp and crunchy and others are slippery and smooth. It’s the most invigorated she’s felt in recent memory. 

She stops to take a seat on an iron bench in a small, secluded park tucked away in an area called Crocus Hill. Rays of sunlight shine through the branches of the old maple trees. Off to the east, there are houses too big to even dream of—houses too big to justify their own existence. She glances across the park and sees a man sitting on the opposite bench. His long beard matches the color of his tattered, bulky coat. He has a portable stereo positioned next to him, but there’s no music coming from the speakers. He smiles a toothless smile and gives her a nod. She wonders what his story is. Her phone starts to vibrate, and she lets the call go to voicemail. And the leaves continue to fall.